Spring 2022

A creek running through a redwood forest

Protected: Atkins Place

by Save the Redwoods League on

Save the Redwoods League protected Atkins Place, a critical redwood habitat corridor bordering Montgomery Woods within the Big River watershed. Atkins Place features 335 acres of mixed coast redwood and Douglas-fir forest and 1.25 miles of high-quality streams for imperiled fish in the salmon family. Well-stewarded second-growth forests like Atkins Place, where the trees range in age from about 50 to 90 years, are key puzzle pieces that can help bolster the health of old-growth groves, watersheds, and entire landscapes.

A woman stands in a forest looking up at the trees.

Two historic projects

by Sam Hodder on

We celebrate the success of the Forever Forest Campaign and historic projects on the Lost Coast that restored Indigenous guardianship to Tcih-Léh-Dûñ and protected the spectacular Lost Coast Redwoods.

A black and white historical photograph of Laura Perrott Mahan, a white woman with dark, curly hair in a dark victorian-era dress

A family tree takes root in conservation

by Save the Redwoods League on

A pioneering organizer inspires her descendants to protect redwood forests. More than 100 years ago, Eureka’s Laura Perrott Mahan helped galvanize the movement to protect old-growth redwoods in danger of being clear-cut. In recent months, dozens of Mahan descendants and friends continued her legacy by supporting Save the Redwoods’ work to protect coast redwoods — raising funds to help the League purchase Atkins Place in Mendocino County.

A woman stands next to a giant sequoia tree among burned giant sequoia, with the sun shining.

Giant sequoias’ declining wildfire resilience

by Garrison Frost on

For millennia, one of the defining characteristics of giant sequoias has been their innate resilience to wildfire. But in the last several years, severe fires in the Sierra Nevada have revealed an unprecedented vulnerability in the groves. League staffers’ publication in a scientific journal is the first to document this new phenomenon.

Two men walking into a coast redwood forest

Thank you to our Forever Forest supporters for changing the redwoods’ fate

by Suzanne Moss on

The ambitious Forever Forest campaign — now concluded — will fund key initiatives to lay the foundation for a new era of redwoods conservation. Even in the face of an unexpected global pandemic, unprecedented wildfires and climate change impacts, and some of the most divisive social and political times in America’s history, we as a community drew strength, inspiration, and resilience from the redwoods we all love.

A redwood forest in Mendocinio County, California.

Returning Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ

by Save the Redwoods League on

The League restored Indigenous guardianship to old-growth redwoods on Sinkyone lands. With their complex understandings of the land, based on traditional knowledge and lifeways within which redwood and other ecosystems flourished for millennia, California tribes are natural leaders and partners in land protection and conservation.

A creek pooled with a fallen trunk in a redwood forest

Protecting Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ

by InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council on

To ensure lasting protection and ongoing stewardship, the League donated and transferred the forest to the Sinkyone Council, and the Council granted the League a conservation easement. Through this partnership, the Sinkyone Council returns Indigenous presence to a land from which Sinkyone people were forcibly removed generations ago.

Black and white photo of a forest next to a dry creek, with hikers in the distance

War stories from the 1960s redwoods conservation movement

by Dana Viloria on

Photographer and activist Dave Van de Mark helped to establish Redwood National Park by documenting the story of the forest. 50 years later, he is photographing the same places he helped to protect, in a stunning reflection on 50 years of transformation in the forest.

redwood forest

Lost Coast Redwoods protected

by Save the Redwoods League on

Five miles of the California coast and thousands of acres of redwood forest are protected forever. Save the Redwoods League acquired the land in December 2021. Now known as Lost Coast Redwoods, it is the largest privately owned California coastline in the coast redwood range.